Disneyland & Disney's Adventure 12-30-09

LuvRaptor

Thursday, December 31, 2009 8:52 PM

Decided to take a one day trip to Disneyland and back to Disney's Adventure while I'm still in California. You know how they say it never rains in California? They lie-BADLY. The weather forecast said 20% chance of rain...I think they meant 120% chance cause the rain started the second I arrived at the park and it drizzled pretty much ALL day. Finally ended around 9pm-gee thanks Mother Nature. That made for some crappy pictures, but the worst part was having to dish out over $6 for one of those shower curtain ponchos. All I could think about was my CP employee blue raingear back in Ohio and the gazillion CP ponchos sitting in my closet **sigh**The good thing was even with the rain the temperature stayed tolerable but was glad I did wore long sleeves and took my jacket!

Arrived on Main Street just in time for park to open. I went immediately to Tomorrowland for Finding Nemo. Wait was 30 minutes....it was alot of fun-nothing that if I had missed it I would have lost any sleep over it. In true Disney fashion it was amazing and the kids loved it. I love the seagulls that sit on the water and say "mine mine mine" everytime a submarine floats by!

I then hit Matterhorn. Wow it seemed fairly rough to me and I had totally forgotten about the nasty creature till I saw him. Wait was 35 minutes.

Went to Adventureland to get Fastpass for Indiana Jones. Back to Tomorrowland and made the dire mistake of going to the Innoventions Experiences. I remember when this was called the Circle of Progress (?) and the ONLY reason I went in was I wanted to sit down for a while. No seats and quite frankly pretty boring stuff going on. It was great for anyone who knows how to play XBox 360 or Guitar Hero though.

The rest of the day I pretty much just took the park in. I tried to go into every store..of course mistake cause I ended up buying a bunch of Disney stuff I so dont need! :)I found it interesting that they had OSU shirts with Mickey on them-I had to buy one of those for my hubby. Later on I came across an entire Rose Bowl stand by Disney's Adventure that was selling OSU (and Oregon of course) Rose Bowl shirts and was so mad I didnt wait and just buy my husband one of those instead!

Disney appeared to be wall to wall people but lucky for me I think the most of the people were on "Its a Small World" line. Every Mother, Father and kid was on that line I swear. I didnt even bother. But I did go into Toontown and found it to be so cool. I love themeing anyway and Disney always goes so above and beyond. Tons of cool props to take pictures of. While I was there I jumped on Roger Rabbits Car Toon Spin-fun...but loved the queue line even more. Wait was 45 minutes.

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad: Was the same as I remembered it the last time I rode it back in '89. Still very smooth though.Wait was 50 minutes.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Sign said wait time was 30 minutes, hard to believe when I saw the line but it was 30 minutes. I had managed to stay dry ALL day long. This freaking ride got my butt drenched on that stupid 1st hill. I was soo pissed! Loved the extra Jack Sparrow sightings :)

Jungle Cruise: Why would this remind me of Paddlewheel Excursion? Corney jokes! :) There was this one idiot who kept sitting on the rail, the captain stopped the boat, told him once he needed to sit down. Guy sat down and 2 seconds later sat on rail again. Captain again stopped boat and asked guy to sit down. Guy looked at him like an idiot and didnt move. I finally got fed up and said "sit down!" and the jerk sat down and didnt move again. He was getting everyone in the boat pissed at him--apparently I was the only one with balls enough to say something. No matter what park you go to there is always that ONE ahole I swear.Anyway the cruise was actually great-the special effects on their animals is sooo Disney!

Haunted Mansion: OK so here was the longest wait of the day. 65 minutes and OMG it seemed like an eternity! The ride itself was great because of all the added Nightmare Before Christmas stuff but I kind of missed the old one too.....just a haunted mansion--but I'm sure that may just be me. Jack's got a huge posse!

Indiana Jones Adventure: Fastpass was so worth it for this! Wow--the queue was awesome and the ride was SOOO fun! Definitely do not miss this ride. Totally the high point of my Disney visit!! :)

The low point was all the freaking line cutters! OMG groups of 5 and more just walking past everyone or climbing over ropes to meet their party. I had to really start ignoring them for fear of getting pissed.

I managed to ride everything I had planned on as well as just being able to take in the entire park at my leisure.

It was close to 6pm when I decided to head over to Disney's Adventure.I had only planned on riding California Adventure a few times. I was estatic to see it was a walk on so my "few" times ended up being 10x. I got the front row and ended up the last row a couple of times too. Loved the last row! The G's coming out of the helix were incredible. It drizzled during the 1st few rides and I thought they would end up closing (Intamins and rain=down time) it never did close down. Did NOT get sick of this ride I just LOVE it! It is totally on my top 10 list!!

Walked over and did Monsters Inc-luckelly Roz didnt talk to me this time instead freaking out the kids in front of me. Classic! :)

Before park closed I decided to try Soaring over California. I remembered someone here on CB mentioned I should have done it so I did and boy he was right! It was one of the coolest virtual reality rides I have ever been on!! It was great! I was one of the many picking my feet up for fear of hitting something! :)

So ended my day at Disney and Disney's Adventure. With the crowds and the way people were just throwing $$ away its hard to believe we are in a recession. Of course the Disney employees remind me so much of Starbucks employees--always so happy and friendly. I even found myself getting excited when I saw Mickey Mouse-he walked by me and touched me on the shoulder! I felt like a little kid! :)

Worth the $97.00 1 day park hopper ticket? You betcha! That averaged out to less than 50.00/park. Despite Mother Nature being a bit** I had a great time! :)

I am so loving California and dreading having to go back to cold Ohio again in a few days! :(

LuvRaptor

Chaindog said:It's easy to see why Walt wanted to build in Florida. It is compact and crowded out there... but I love the place, too! Glad you had fun.

But I didn't see you mention Space Mountain or Tower of Terror - easily my favorite rides there - just about anywhere.

You know I kind of like Disney World better myself....seems more modern or something. I did ride Space Mountain-forgot to mention my bad. I didnt see too much of a difference - what did I miss that was new? Tower of Terror I skipped this visit but we hit it 2x last week when we were there. Yes-I love that ride too......the queue is freaking incredible I swear they dont miss a thing, do they?? :)

You will notice in my ^ TR I refer to having to buy a $6 poncho when I was at Disney. Well-I went to Sea World today and sat in the "soak zone" of Shamu's show. So I dished out $8 (yes EIGHT) to buy a Shamu poncho to avoid getting slammed. Man we got SLAMMED too but lucky for me I was bone dry! The people next to me? Not so much!So now I have a Disney and Sea World shower curtain.....I mean poncho. Great--just what I need!!! NOT! :)